Paddock-to-plate business Merre Local celebrates new shopfront to sell oat products, meat and more in Merredin

One of WA’s most well-known paddock to plate businesses has reached another milestone in its goal to boost the availability of local produce in the regions after opening a shop front in Merredin. Merre Local — the brainchild of Merre Granola founder Estelle Madaffari — was heaving with customers celebrating its relocation from a small trailer on the farm to a large store in town on the first day of trading on April 27. Ms Madaffari and her husband Paul are breathing new life into the historic building at 9 Bates Street, once the town’s thriving butcher store Merredin Meats. The couple have transformed the shopfront into a large store selling a range of different WA-grown products. “Merre Local is an extension of our business Merre Granola... which started with the question, ‘we aren’t we eating the food we grow’,” Ms Madaffari said. “Now, it is about connecting people with local food. “Our (Merre Granola) facility has outgrown the farm and we saw an opportunity in this beautiful, historical building.” The bottom floor of the building includes a large kitchen — which Ms Madaffari is transforming into a bakehouse — with two to three ovens allowing Merre Granola to produce up to 250kg of granola in a day. There is also a shopfront, where Ms Madaffari is selling meat supplied by Dowerin Gourmet Butcher Shop owner Brent Walsh. “A lot of the Wheatbelt butchers have closed in recent years, forcing people to buy from the big stores in Perth,” he said. “I started buying meat from Dowerin for our workers, and just thought ‘if this is working, why couldn’t we do this on a larger scale’.” Also on offer is fresh fish, pork and chicken, lupin and pasta products, local honey, oil and of course, Merre Granola products. Merre Granola started in 2020 as a way to harness local produce grown in WA after nearly a year of planning. The business name draws inspiration from the pronunciation of Merredin, with “Merre” pronounced in the same way. “We started hiring a commercial kitchen in town, through 2020 and the middle of COVID,” Ms Madaffari said. “We wanted our own facility… it was hard to build something on-farm, so we got a large trailer. “And we barely used it because within a year we had outgrown it.” After attending the Food & Hotel Asia Expo in Singapore in September last year, international interest started booming. And while the business isn’t exporting just yet, there are plans on the horizon. “We have to pace ourselves… but there is a huge demand for oats in Asia,” Ms Madaffari said. “There is so much interest, and Australia does grow the best oats in the world. “We really have something to be proud of in our grains industry.” Closer to home, other opportunities have presented themselves with a popular café chain now using Merre Granola brand vanilla porridge and granola on its menu across the country. But Ms Madaffari said it was important to be realistic about where the opportunities were. “The city retail market is crowded with granola, so we are now more food service and export-focused but still offer our granola retail throughout the Wheatbelt and our shop front,” she said. “But we have created a product where people want to come to the region and buy something from the region. “Anywhere I go, I look for food from that region.” It was serendipitous timing to open the shop at a time when Mr Madaffari was seeding oats. The couple run a broad acre farm 5km from town and have two children. “They are so excited and so proud of the businesses we have grown,” Ms Madaffari said. “Merredin has been the foundation for us to launch the business. We feel very lucky.”